Hugely influential in his lifetime, Renan was eulogised after his death as the embodiment of the progressive spirit in western culture.
Anatole France wrote that Renan was the incarnation of modernity. Renan's works were read and appreciated by many of the leading literary figures of the time, including
James Joyce,
Marcel Proust,
Matthew Arnold,
Edith Wharton, and
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. Renan's interpretations of history become the subject of frequent
polemical sniping in
Jacob Burckhardt's lectures at
Basel University, also receiving sustained and acid criticism from his (posthumously better-known) colleague and faculty member at Basel in
Nietzsche's later works where Renan appears as a go-to exemplar of
ressentiment. One of his greatest admirers was
Manuel González Prada in
Peru who took the
Life of Jesus as a basis for his anticlericalism. In his 1932 document "
The Doctrine of Fascism", Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini also applauded perceived "prefascist intuitions" in a section of Renan's "Meditations" that argued against democracy and individual rights as "
chimerical" and intrinsically opposed to "nature's plans".
Statue In 1903 a major controversy accompanied the installation of a monument in Tréguier designed by
Jean Boucher. Placed in the local cathedral square, it was interpreted as a challenge to Catholicism, and led to widespread protests, especially because the site was normally used for the temporary pulpit erected at the traditional Catholic festival of the
Pardon of St Yves. It also included the Greek goddess
Athena raising her arm to crown Renan gesturing in apparent challenge towards the cathedral. The local clergy organised a protest
calvary sculpture designed by
Yves Hernot as "a symbol of the triumphant
ultramontaine church."
Views on race Renan believed that racial characteristics were instinctual and
deterministic. Renan believed that the
Semitic race was inferior to the
Aryan race. Renan claimed that the Semitic mind was limited by dogmatism and lacked a cosmopolitan conception of civilisation. For Renan, Semites were "an incomplete race." Some authors argue that Renan developed his antisemitism from
Voltaire's anti-Judaism.
Hannah Arendt wrote that Renan was probably the first to characterize the Semitic and Aryan races as being in opposition to each other in an essential division of mankind. He did not regard the
Ashkenazi Jews of Europe as being a Semitic people. Renan is acknowledged for launching the so-called
Khazar theory. This theory states that Ashkenazim had their origin in Turkic refugees that had converted to Judaism and later migrated from the collapsed
Khazar Khanate westward into the
Rhineland, and exchanged their native
Khazar language for the
Yiddish language while continuing to practice the Jewish religion. In his 1883 lecture "
Le Judaïsme comme race et comme religion" ("") he disputed the concept that
Jewish people constitute a unified racial entity in a
biological sense, which made his views unpalatable within
racial antisemitism. Renan was also known for being a strong critic of
German ethnic nationalism, with its antisemitic undertones. His notions of race and ethnicity were completely at odds with the European antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Renan wrote the following about the long history of
persecution of Jews: When all nations and all ages have persecuted you, there must be some motive behind it all. The Jew, up to our own time, insinuated himself everywhere, claiming the protection of the common law; but, in reality, remaining outside the common law. He retained his own status; he wished to have the same guarantees as everyone else, and, over and above that, his own exceptions and special laws. He desired the advantages of the nations without being a nation, without helping to bear the burdens of the nations. No people has ever been able to tolerate this. The nations are military creations founded and maintained by the sword; they are the work of peasants and soldiers; towards establishing them the Jews have contributed nothing. Herein is the great fallacy inspired in Israelite pretensions. The tolerated alien can be useful to a country, but only on condition that the country does not allow itself to be invaded by him. It is not fair to claim family rights in a house which one has not built, like those birds which come and take up their quarters in a nest which does not belong to them, or like the crustaceans which steal the shell of another species. However, during the 1880s, Renan shifted away from these views. In a lecture on "Judaism as a Race and as a Religion", he stated: When, in 1791, the National Assembly decreed the emancipation of the Jews, it concerned itself very little with race. It considered that men ought to be judged, not by the blood that runs in their veins, but by their moral and intellectual value. It is the glory of France to take these questions by their human side. The work of the nineteenth century is to tear down every ghetto, and I have no praise for those who seek to rebuild them. The Israelite race has in the past rendered the greatest services to the world. Blended with the different nations, in harmony with the diverse national unities of Europe, it will continue to do in the future what it has done in the past. By its collaboration with all the liberal forces of Europe, it will contribute eminently to the social progress of humanity. In the aforementioned 1882 conference on
What Is a Nation?, Renan had spoken out against the theories that were based on race: Both the principle of nations is right and legitimate, as that of the primordial right of races is wrong and full of dangers for true progress … The truth is that pure race does not exist and that to base politics on ethnographic analysis means to base it on a chimera. In 1883, in a lecture called "The Original Identity and Gradual Separation of Judaism and Christianity", he said: Judaism, which has served so well in the past, will still serve in the future. It will serve the true cause of liberalism, of the modern spirit. Every Jew is a liberal ... The enemies of Judaism, however, if you only look at them more closely, you will see that they are the enemies of the modern spirit in general. Other comments on race, have also proven controversial, especially his belief that political policy should take into account supposed racial differences: Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor... A race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble race to working in the
ergastulum like Negroes and Chinese, and they rebel... But the life at which our workers rebel would make a Chinese or a
fellah happy, as they are not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he is made for, and all will be well. This passage, among others, was cited by
Aimé Césaire in his
Discours sur le colonialisme, as evidence of the alleged hypocrisy of Western humanism and its "sordidly racist" conception of the rights of man.
Republican racism During the arising of racism theories around Europe and specifically in
French Third Republic, Renan had an important influence on the matter. He was a defender of people's
self-determination concept, but on the other hand was in fact convinced of a "racial hierarchy of peoples" that he said was "established". Discursively, he subordinated the principle of self-determination of peoples to a racial hierarchy, i.e. he supported the colonialist expansion and the racist view of the Third Republic because he believed the French to be hierarchically superior (in a racial matter) to the African nations. This subtle racism, called by
Gilles Manceron "Republican racism", was common in France during the Third Republic and was also a well-known defensing discourse in politics. Supporters of colonialism used the concept of cultural superiority, and described themselves as "protectors of civilization" to justify their colonial actions and territorial expansion. There was also another motivation for his support of colonialism: Renan wrote that "a nation which does not colonize is irrevocably doomed to socialism, to the war between rich and poor".{{cite book |title=Reparation, Restitution, and the Politics of Memory ==Honours==